Power Supply Question

Infinitum

<div class="IPBDescription">watt vs devices</div> Quick question me and a friend are debating

He has a 300 watt powersupply and wants to know if he adds the following to his PC if it will still work properly:
1 atapi device (CD-Rom/DVD-Rom/Burner)
4 HDD's (Working off a RAID controller with 2 channels)

I'm thinking that it will barely work.....

Trying to get a few opinions on it.

Scythe

Werhl I wouldn't think so.

I have no idea how much power a HD would dissipate but I daresay he should consider upgrading to a 350 or 400 watt.

--Scythe--

Codeman

it will probably work - i'm sure a mate of mine has done the same thing using a dual CPU system (which naturally eats more power than a single cpu)

at worst, it might get unstable, but if that happens you know what to do - spend like $50 on a bigger power supply (thats $50 of our currency, not the yank or euro stuff)

if you're really desperate to know, the devices usually have their power consumption stated on them somewhere (and the powersupplies usually, but not always, list their power output for each voltage rail)

-- Codeman

DOOManiac

AFAIK the power would only properly work with as many devices as you have plugs for. And a 300W power supply doesn't have that many plugs.

Wheeee

It's a little more complex than that. What other stuff is he already running on that computer? The faster the processor, the more current it draws. What's the max rated output for each of the voltage rails? (For example, floppies use the 5V output). If 3.3V + 5V rated output isn't at least 180watts, I wouldn't recommend putting 5 drives on the PSU. Does he overclock? How fast is his RAM, does he overvolt/overclock it, and how much/many sticks of it does he have? What other accessories does he have on it? (PCI cards, scsi adapters, etc... the video card also draws a lot of power, especially the newer ones).

Codeman

you're right there Wheeee, i was almost goin to mention most of that stuff myself but ruled it out for one thing: while you may know what votages everything uses, without a lot of multimeter work it's unlikely you'll find out how much current it all chews (drives usually have it on their labels, but cpu/ram/motherboard/pci/agp cards all dont)

personally i'd suggest a 400w+ power supply just to be safe when it comes to RAID drives (i have a 350w but i only have a DVD, floppy and HDDa nd teh usual mobo/ram/cpu to eat that pwoer)

the number of drive plugs coming from the power supply isn't an issue as splitters are available to make 1 plug into 2.

-- Codeman

eaglec

From experience it works fine so long as it's a GOOD QUALITY 300W power supply. There is a lot of difference between PSU's that claim 300W and you can't always tell by price. 300W is close to the mark though even for a good PSU and you might be better of just buying a more powerful one before you start.
Stay away from budget stuff as a rule.